China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company (COSCO) is upgrading its container carrier capacity to the US west coast buoyed by the export boom in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) area.

The country's largest shipping company said it has begun using five new container vessels that could carry 8,000-TEU (twenty-foot-equivalent unit) goods to replace the current 5,400-TEU vessels to serve the Yantian port, Shenzhen to Long Beach line.

Two new vessels, COSCO Long Beach and COSCO Shenzhen, among the biggest and most advanced container carriers in the world, called at Yantian port in mid-August and early this week, before sailing straight to Long Beach in the US.

The remaining three will be put into service one after another by the end of this year, said Shi Meisi, deputy managing director of COSCO Container Lines Co (COSCON), the group's container business arm based in Shanghai.

"With new vessels in service, our SEA (Southeast Asia to US west coast weekly service) line now can provide 3,000 container space to Yantian port a week, representing an increase of 900," Shi said.

COSCO's SEA line was hotly pursued this year after it shortened the sailing time between Yantian and Long Beach from 13 days to 11 days this year, the shortest among all shipping companies.

The business between China and the US contributed 65 to 70 per cent to COSCON's overall container services, said Wu Shiquan, a manager at COSCON Shenzhen Branch.

As a result, the company concentrated about 60 per cent of its container vessel capacity to handle the business, he said.

"About 90 per cent of the business from China to the US handled by COSCO was generated from the PRD area, from Christmas gifts to all kinds of daily necessities," said Wu. "Since the demands from US markets are strong all year long, we do not feel there is a strong peak season or low season now."

Xu Lirong, managing director of COSCON, estimated that 18 million TEUs of goods would be generated in the PRD area in 2005, which would surge to 25 million TEUs by 2010.

"The current situation is that ports in the PRD area do not have enough handling capacity to satisfy growing export demands," said Xu, commenting on the newly operated Nansha port in Guangzhou.

China will continue to play an important role in propelling the growth of global container business that is expected to increase by 11 per cent this year and no less than 9 per cent in 2005 and 2006, Xu forecast.

After strengthening its China-US line, COSCO will further improve the shipping capacity of its other lines. "Our overall shipping capacity of container carriers will rise to 800,000 TEUs by 2010 and into the top three of the world," said Wei Jiafu, president of COSCO.

(China Daily October 4, 2004)